Frances Willard's Legacy PDF

## 11 Frances Willard **SEPTEMBER 28, 1839-FEBRUARY 17, 1898** **THE GUNS ARE BALLOTS AND THE BULLETS ARE IDEAS.** One day when she was a child, Frances Willard's brother Oliver challenged her to walk ahead of him across a pasture. Simple! But there was a catch - he was holding a loaded double-ba...

## 11 Frances Willard **SEPTEMBER 28, 1839-FEBRUARY 17, 1898** **THE GUNS ARE BALLOTS AND THE BULLETS ARE IDEAS.** One day when she was a child, Frances Willard's brother Oliver challenged her to walk ahead of him across a pasture. Simple! But there was a catch - he was holding a loaded double-barreled shotgun aimed at her with both barrels cocked. She marched boldly across the field, not afraid for one second. Frances Willard was not one to refuse a dare. Frances considered herself a wild child. She grew up on a farm in Wisconsin and was allowed to run free. She played all the games boys did - marbles, tops, horseshoes. She walked on stilts and climbed trees. She learned how to use tools and made her own wooden carts, sleds, bows and arrows, and other toys. It's no surprise that she was called a tomboy! Her childhood taught her an early lesson about women's rights. "It is good for boys and girls to know the same things, so that the former shall not feel and act so overwise," she said. The day that Frances turned sixteen was the day she called her martyrdom. From then on, she was forced into the costume of a woman. Gone were her short hair, loose dresses, and sturdy shoes. In their place, she wore corsets, petticoats, long and heavy skirts, buttoned shoes, ribboned bonnets, and gloves. She had to pin up her hair using eighteen hairpins. Outdoor activities became impossible - even walking was a chore. But Frances had a lively mind, and she loved learning. Until she was eleven, her education came mostly from her family and neighbors. Her mother taught her to read poetry aloud with confidence and emotion. It prepared her well for her life as a public speaker. She graduated in 1859 from a women's college in Evanston, Illinois. Frances became a teacher, despite her father's disapproval. He had been a modern father - he had always played with his children and had cared for them whenever his wife was away - but he thought only a man should work. Frances disagreed. "Girls should be definitely set at work after their school days end, even as boys are, to learn some bread-winning employment that will give them an independent status," she protested. A famous painting features Frances Willard surrounded by outcasts of society considered unworthy of the vote - prisoners, Native Americans, and those who were called lunatics and idiots. It debased many groups of people by implying that unlike them, women were worthy of the vote. In 1874, Frances left teaching, even though she'd risen to become dean of the women's college of Northwestern University. Activism called to her. As a girl, she'd heard Abby Kelley Foster speak against slavery, a memory that stayed with her. She dedicated herself to the temperance cause, as she saw alcohol abuse destroying family life through violence and poverty. Frances helped found the Woman's Christian Temperance Union that year, eventually becoming its president. She worked tirelessly to gain both the public's support and the backing of political candidates. Sometimes, she gave more than four hundred speeches a year. Soon, she saw that if women had the vote, they could enact laws to ban alcohol and veto liquor licenses. Unlike other suffragists, Frances didn't frame suffrage as a right. She saw it as a means to an end. In what she called the “home protection" fight, she said "the guns are ballots and the bullets are ideas." Susan B. Anthony was thrilled when Frances joined the suffrage cause. The WCTU was a huge organization with a national reach. But not every temperance worker wanted suffrage. "We do not propose to trail our skirts through the mire of politics," sniffed one WCTU leader. But politics held no scorn for Frances. If women were in politics, she said, they could walk side by side with men "clad in the garments of power!" Frances had a natural talent for persuading, negotiating, and compromising. She loved the limelight, even though she considered it a sin. She was modest, generally dressing in black or gray, but she wore sky blue scarves that drew people's eyes to her. She had a gentle, pleasing manner and freely showed concern and affection for others. She knew exactly how to work a room. *The Suffrage Fight* The suffrage fight was slowed by differing opinions on many fronts. But when it came to one issue - religion - suffragists were willing to put aside their differences. Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony were Quakers. Frances Willard was a Methodist. Two other suffrage leaders, Adelina Otero-Warren and Lucy Burns, were Catholic. Mary Ann Shadd Cary's religion was education, and Matilda Joslyn Gage followed no religion at all. Suffragists worked alongside Pandita Ramabai Sarasvati, a Hindu woman who worked for better lives for women and children in India. They welcomed volunteer Komako Kimura, a Japanese actress and wife of a self-styled spiritual teacher. And they helped Jewish women defeat anti-Semitic, anti-suffrage political candidates. "I find great good in all religions ... no word of faith in God or love toward man is alien to my sympathy," Frances Willard declared. Elizabeth Cady Stanton agreed. "I can speak and work with all the children of men," she wrote to Isabella Beecher Hooker. For suffragists, it seems, the only religion that mattered was faith in woman herself. But Frances was another suffragist who stooped to slandering black people in her pursuit of the vote. In the South, she brazenly proclaimed that black people were drunkards and black men a menace to white women. Suffragist Ida B. Wells-Barnett was incensed. Frances Willard insulted the entire black community "in order to gain favor with those who are hanging, shooting and burning Negroes alive," she accused, Frances's words were an unexpected slap in the face, as many WCTU chapters freely admitted black people. She lost the support of many women over her racist stance, but still she remained in the thick of the suffrage fight. Frances pushed for other changes in women's lives. In her fifties, she took up bicycling, an activity that was considered unladylike and even a threat to women's health. On a bicycle, she could shed some of her hated clothing and enjoy the outdoors once again. Her book on learning how to ride a bicycle, *Wheel Within a Wheel*, became a best seller and encouraged women to hit the road. Frances rallied a huge and passionate following to the suffrage cause. For women, she wanted total freedom - to work, to live peaceably in their homes, to vote and participate in politics, to move freely in the world. At her death, she even defied the burial customs of the day, insisting she be cremated and her ashes returned to the earth she so loved.